In the past seven years, a new view of reading instruction has taken hold in school districts nationwide.

The issue these days isn't whether "phonics" or "whole language" is the better approach for beginning readers, but how to blend those philosophies and other elements in a reading program tailored to the individual child.

For a growing group of educators, the reading wars, waged so ferociously in the 1980s and '90s, are past. Or at least passe.

"I think more schools are moving toward a balanced literacy program," said Tina Chekan, co-principal and literacy coach at Propel McKeesport, a charter elementary school. Propel also operates elementary schools in Homestead, Kennedy and Turtle Creek.

"There's not one program that fits all," she said. "We know that our students are on varying ability levels. We work to really focus on the individual."

Growing academic acceptance of balanced or comprehensive literacy is one reason for the decline of the reading wars. Federal intervention in the debate is another.

The U.S. Department of Education distributes $1 billion annually in Reading First grants to states, districts and schools that use "proven methods" of reading instruction in kindergarten through third grade. Phonics is high on the list of approved methods.

In addition, the federal No Child Left Behind Act mandates that districts use "scientifically proven" instructional methods as they strive to make all children proficient in math and reading by 2014.

Such mandates have "dampened the dialogue" between phonics and whole-language partisans, said Anne Creany, associate professor and coordinator of the master's in literacy program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Creany is a whole-language advocate.

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials, who use Reading First money at 25 of 39 elementary schools, had federal requirements in mind when they selected a new reading program last year.

The new program, "Treasures" by Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, has a strong phonics component, said Susan Sauer, curriculum supervisor for kindergarten through fifth grade, and Barbara Rudiak, executive director of the district's 18 kindergarten-through-fifth-grade schools.

"I think we are going in the right direction," Ms. Sauer said.

Parsing the differences

Phonics refers to the sound-letter relationships, such as the diphthong "oi" and the digraph "ck," that beginning readers can learn as aids to sounding out unfamiliar words. If kids learn that the "ck" combination has a "k" sound, they're on the way to pronouncing "tick," "tock" and "clock."

One camp in the reading wars has argued for specific phonics instruction. The whole-language camp says phonics skills can be acquired in the course of a child's exposure to text, something that "happens in a more opportunistic way rather than a systematic way," Dr. Creany said.

In 1997, as the reading wars raged, Congress formed the National Reading Panel to evaluate the research on instructional practices and figure out what works best.

In findings decried by whole-language advocates, who claimed much of the research on their approach was excluded unfairly, the panel recommended explicit instruction in five areas: phonemic awareness, referring to a grasp of the sounds that make up words; phonics; vocabulary; fluency; and comprehension. These became the "proven" methods rolled into the No Child Left Behind Act and Reading First, and they are the mainstays of most reading programs today.

"Reading is not innate. Children can't be immersed in words and simply absorb them and read them from the page," said Melissa Simon, curriculum and reading coordinator with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit's Reading Achievement Center, which offers teacher training, materials and other support to local school districts.

She said children must internalize lower-level skills, such as phonemic awareness and phonics, as quickly as possible so they can focus their cognitive abilities on comprehension skills.

Ms. Simon said whole-language features can be incorporated when appropriate. For example, teacher-guided "read-alouds" can help children develop a love of literature -- an aim of whole-language advocates-while building fluency and vocabulary skills.

Darion Griffin, associate director of the American Federation of Teachers' educational issues department, said the panel's findings represented a major expansion in thinking about reading. She said vocabulary and fluency weren't distinguishing features of either side in the reading wars.

"Each is necessary but none is sufficient," she said, referring to the five core topics. "This is a different place than where we might have been [without the panel's work]."

Finding what works

Aided by benchmark tests and progress monitoring, teachers must figure out the correct doses of medicine for each child.

Cathy H. Roller, director of research and policy for the International Reading Association, said students must have "the right things in the right amounts at the right time. Some kids need direct instruction in phonics. Other kids come to kindergarten reading fluently in a second- and third-grade text."

Carol M. Connor, an assistant professor at Florida State University and researcher at the Florida Center for Reading Research, developed a software program for taking the guesswork out of lesson planning. It eliminates philosophical bias, too.

Given data about an elementary student, the program calculates the types and amounts of instruction the child needs to meet classroom goals. Promising results from a pilot study in Florida schools were published in the January issue of the journal Science.

But overall results from the national shift in reading instruction are not clear-cut.

The 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading, given three years into No Child Left Behind and Reading First, showed that scores of fourth-graders had increased one point on a 500-point scale from the last test in 2003. Results from the 2007 test will be released this fall.

In April, federal officials said an analysis of state-by-state data showed that students have been making "tremendous progress in a relatively short period of time." The progress cited fluency gains among first- and third-graders in Reading First schools.

Ms. Griffin said some trends related to Reading First -- such as tying teacher training and instructional materials to curriculum -- can only be helpful.

New debates

The reading panel findings, No Child Left Behind and Reading First have raised new controversies. Critics complain that federal requirements have led to excessive testing, burdensome paperwork and amount to educational micro-management. Federal advisers also have been accused of forcing some districts into buying textbooks from companies in which they had connections.

The reading panel didn't discount the possible effectiveness of any instructional method, but only said it found evidence for five topics. The panel recommended additional research. In a recent interview, panel chairman Donald Langenberg, a physicist, said the panel's findings weren't "holy writ."

Some current research is focusing on how to improve achievement in fourth grade, when some children are having problems with vocabulary and comprehension, and how science might be integrated with reading instruction. At IUP, Dr. Creany said, she continues to expose would-be students to the whole language view, in part to document the history of reading instruction and in part to hedge against another pendulum swing.

Some educators now downplay the significance of the reading wars, calling them the over-publicized rants of academic extremists. Dr. Roller, of the International Reading Association, considers the wars a dead issue.

"I wish somebody would hold a big funeral service and bury this casket," she said.

First Published: August 26, 2007, 7:15 a.m.